7 Small Changes That Will Make a Big Difference in Your Life
Our happiness and success rely on thinking constructive thoughts, acting with intent and creating strong relationships with others. The good news is we have control over all of these areas. It is possible to choose to change. Here are some of the most common changes that can make the biggest impact in your life.

How Successful People Stay Calm
The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. Moderate, intermittent stress can be helpful, but it can be managed. Here are some of the strategies top performers use to lower their stress levels despite what’s happening in their world.

Should You Go With Your Gut or Think it Through?
Many people will say that it’s better to follow your heart, and it will never steer you wrong. But research is showing when this is true and when it isn’t. Your intuition is an important step to help you make a decision, but there are other factors involved. Learn about how your intuition works to help you and how you can maximize its guidance.

In this rare video, Napoleon Hill, author of “Think and Grow Rich,” talks about your imagination which builds your plans and purpose. He describes the two forms of imagination, synthetic and creative, and gives examples of each. When you use your imagination, you’re able to formulate new concepts and products which can serve others and bring you ample compensation.

When you have a challenge, go into a meditative state. Ask your subconscious to create a symbol for whatever problem you’re experiencing. Be nonjudgmental of whatever comes to the surface. Examine it. Notice its color, shape, size, texture, and if it’s doing anything.

Enter into an active dialogue with the symbol. Ask it what’s going on? Ask it why you’re experiencing that problem? What is its message to you?

Allow it to answer in any way you can understand. The answer may come in images, words, or simply a knowingness.

Ask it what you need to do to resolve the issue? Acknowledge it as your teacher. It has much wisdom to share with you, as long as you are open to it. Ask it what gift it has for you if you meet its needs?

Imagery can help you to access inner resources that haven’t used before. Once you allow a symbol for your problem to rise into consciousness, it releases some of its energy. Just by observing the image, things begin to shift around in your subconscious mind.

This opens more space for you to heal. Sometimes, you’ll simply receive insight pointing you in a direction. It’s up to you to take the appointed path.

Your inner self will get your attention one way or the other. Listen to it before it takes you by the shoulder and shoves.

In 1991, I strained my right shoulder by rolling over in bed. Not a very dramatic way of injuring myself. Nonetheless, it was painful, and refused to heal. Even chiropractic adjustments didn’t ease it for long. After two months of pain, where just lifting a glass of water was almost impossible, I utilized nondirective imagery. I asked what was going on with my shoulder.

Immediately, I imagined a hand pushing my right shoulder forward, and another hand pulling it back. A tug of war. I didn’t understand the message, and asked for clarification. It communicated that I was holding myself back. I recognized how I’d been keeping myself from moving forward in life, and decided not to do that anymore. Within five minutes of my decision, just like magic, the pain disappeared.

Not all healing is so immediate, but imagery can help you along the pathway to resolution. Imagery is the language of the subconscious and the nervous system. You communicate your intention to the mind with directed imagery. By visualizing yourself successful or healthy, you give the mind direction in its own system of communication.

When you worry, you’re visualizing what you don’t want to happen. You use imagery in everyday language, such as “It’s killing me,” “I’m beating my head against a wall,” “He’s like a bulldog,” “I’m so angry I could just explode,” “I feel like I’m running in circles.” Imagery is the way the mind processes and stores information.

Imagery can also give you vital information about what’s going on within your body and your affairs. It can tell you where you might be blocking yourself, why, and what you need to do to overcome your restrictions. Dreams can give you this type of information.

Instead of telling your subconscious what you want, you can listen to its wisdom to discover what you might need. By paying attention to your subconscious, and what it has to share with you, you allow your challenges to become your teachers.

When you’re stressed, overwhelmed, or anxious, your brain blocks access to both the rational and intuitive part of you. Essentially, your wires have gotten flooded with too much stimulus and nothing can get through.

This can happen in sports or in life. Your emotions can keep you from being able to think clearly, or you ruminate too much about an issue. Your mind gets into a negative feedback loop and you can’t move forward.

In Christopher Bergland’s article, “No. 1 Reason Practice Makes Perfect,” he writes about how we create grooves in our mind when we do things repetitively. He talks mainly about athletics and muscle memory, but it also relates to life in general.

“You become super fluid in sports – and in life – when you have freed up the working memory of your cerebrum [conscious mind] to strategize and keep tabs on the more cerebral aspects of everything that’s going on while completely trusting your gut and the intuitive powers of your cerebellum [subconscious mind].”

To clear away the mental debris, he describes a simple exercise. This allows your conscious mind to figure things out while opening up to the wisdom of your inner mind. He suggests, “relaxing the backs of your eyes, taking some deep breaths and ‘letting go.'”

Practice this several times a day when things are going smoothly. Then the process will be automatic when you really need it.

Recently, Jeff and I visited Phoenix, 120 miles away. I had a meeting and we planned to do some shopping. The afternoon was forecasted to be stormy, but I hoped the rain would hold off until we were on our way home in the early evening.

We were pretty lucky. The rain held off all afternoon. As Jeff shut the car door after our next-to-last stop, it started to rain. By the time we pulled out of the parking place, it was pouring.

We still had one stop to make, to get gas, which would have been interesting with the continuous lightning. But we drove out of that storm cell, and were able to stay dry while we got gas.

Our route remained dry most of the way home. Lightning lit the clouds all around us on our trip. About 30 minutes from home, we noticed a bunch of brake lights up ahead on the freeway. We slowed down, and as we got closer we noticed lots of cars pulled off to the side of the road.

As we got to the area, we realized that the ground and road were covered with hail. There were a few hailstones still falling, but nothing like what had created this hazard. We must have missed that storm by just a minute or so. A couple of miles further, we drove out of the precipitation.

Just a few miles from home, we drove through some rain and a few hailstones. But it was dry when we got home. We unloaded the car, and not fifteen minutes later, it started to pour. We were very fortunate to have ducked most of the storms that day and evening.

When I heard the weather report for our trip, I’d set my intention to stay dry while in and out of the car in Phoenix. For the most part, it happened. Do I believe I changed the weather? No. Especially since so many thousands of people in our drought ridden state wanted it to rain.

However, I believe my intention affected our timing. If we’d been in that last shop for 10 seconds more, we would have been drenched. We missed the hailstorm by seconds, and got home minutes before the storm hit. We weren’t able to avoid all of the storms, but we dodged most of them and the most damaging ones.

When you set an intention, you bring all the force and direction of your creative mind to bear on a situation. It can make you aware of opportunities, or inspire you to make a contact. Or it can affect your timing so that you return home safely during a day of storms.

Years ago, this book leaped off of the library shelf at me. It was at a time in which I was just recognizing that some people in my life were belittling and demeaning me, and that type of behavior wasn’t beneficial. It seems so simple now, but at the time this was a new concept for me. The information in this book was an eye-opener to me. The author explains how a person becomes a verbal abuser and why they do it.

I thought that if I could just explain myself better, the person would understand and not be so angry and mean. I learned that they didn’t want to understand. A verbal abuser feels so bad about themselves that they put others down to make themselves feel better, more powerful. And nothing I said or did was going to change their behavior.

This book details the different types of verbal abuse, how to recognize if you’re being abused, and what to do about it. The author describes the signals you might physically and mentally experience when you’re being verbally abused.

As children, we’re told that “Sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt me.” But words do hurt, deeper and longer sometimes than physical abuse. My hurt feelings were always invalidated, and I went along with that, until I read this book. This book is so valuable to me that I don’t let it out of my possession.

Question: I have been trying to develop my “psychic gifts” for many years now, without success. What can I do to get past it?

Answer: Many people are in a similar situation to you. They would like to develop an ability or talent more, but feel that it’s being blocked somehow. Sometimes, its cause is in a past life, and is re-stimulated in the present life. I’d recommend you read my article, “Past Lives: 101, Part 1-3″ especially part 3, (go to my Article Index page and scroll down near the bottom) to get some deeper understanding of how this works. And many times, it’s something that has happened in the current life that has shut it down.

As to how to get past it, begin telling yourself that it’s safe now to experience those gifts. The subconscious is just trying to keep you protected and safe. If some trauma happened in a past life that made it dangerous to express them, then letting the subconscious/soul know that the fear is a response to a time long ago, and not relevant now, is key. Inner reassurance that it isn’t dangerous for you any more, that this is a different situation, can help to reduce the subconscious’ attempt to protect you.

Generally, as with any block, a past life issue was then re-triggered in the present life. If you can track back to what might have been said or done that shut you down as a child, that can be very helpful. An adult might have disbelieved you or was afraid of how you could sense things. Unfortunately, this happens a lot.

To handle it, you follow the same process as dealing with a past life issue. Reassurance, encouragement, specifically addressing what was said or done, will help the subconscious realize that it’s okay now.

Then start practicing your psychic gift in a small way, in one area. For instance, sense where you should go for the best parking place. Or, when the phone rings, sense who it might be. You could get the pack of “psychic cards,” that have different shapes on them, choose one at a time, and practice predicting which one has been selected. Pick one exercise, and do that and only that one for a while.

This is to help begin expanding the availability of your gift, as well as showing the subconscious that nothing bad is happening from it.

Take it slow, one step at a time. This builds your confidence that can expand into other areas, and it builds the subconscious’ feeling of safety. I know you want to make faster progress, but it could be counter-productive. If you try to go too fast, it might be too much for your subconscious to handle, and it’ll shut down again. Take it slow and steady.